Evaluating your recruitment process

Recruiting the right staff for your business can be an expensive proposition. When you do recruit you want to make sure you get the most from your efforts. The most obvious return will be finding the right person for the job. But, just because you end up finding the right person the last time doesn't mean you can't improve your recruitment processes in future. With some attention and a few new skills you will be able to reduce cost and time, and increase your 'strike rate' - finding the best talent for your organsation.

One straight-forward way of evaluating your recruitment process is to look at it in terms of a marketing exercise. In the same way as you might wish to attract new clients, when recruiting you'll create a message (job description), use various media to communicate the message (job sections, online, recruitment agencies), generate leads to add to your sales process (shortlist and interviews) and ultimately hire who you feel is the best person for the job.

Like a marketing campaign you'll want to ensure that you get value for money from your chosen media, attract high-quality leads/candidate and generally improve your business' image. Consider the following questions:

1. Are you attracting the right candidates?

Quality vs. quantity - It would be tempting to say that finding a highly qualified candidate is the point, whether you receive 10 applications or 10,000 - and up to a point it is. However, your recruitment process should be able to deliver on both points and consistently. To many or too few applications cause problems:

Problem with low number of quality - homogenous, is the best you choose the best possible or the best that applied?

Problem with high number of low quality - no one is up for the job

How to judge

How to improve on this

2. Is your process effective in terms of both financial and time costs?

Tracking responses to find improvements in

Message

Media chosen

3. How does your recruitment process impact on the overall image of your business?

You are, in effect, advertising your whole business

How are you seen within the industry?

How you position your company will affect how likely applicants are to applying for other positions in the future

Are you selling you business? Is your message consistent

Disgruntled people (those who feel mistreated in the process) can become a source of negative word of mouth and research shows that this dissatisfaction spreads into consumer behaviour - so it affect the individual and their circle as customers

One issue of course, is coming up with hard data, or even anecdotal evidence to help answer these questions about your recruiting process and the recruitment agency and other partners who you choose to work with in that process. HireScores.com goes some ways to helping answer that problem by allowing you to gain feedback regarding both your own business and the experience candidates have with your recruitment partners - helping you to make more educated decisions in the future.